A moment later she came up the stairs with the small instrument in her hands. She gasped as she saw the array of controls and asked, "I thought he said it was easy?"
"To him," growled Dusty. He fitted the menslator on his shoulder by its strap and fiddled with the controls. He hit one setting that made Barbara cry out inexplicably (which irritated him) and then he found another setting that made him feel like a hundred and seventy pounds of toothache (then he forgave Barbara) and after some more fiddling with the tuning and the gain Dusty hit the right setting.
Everything became clear to him.
Directly in front of him was a meter that read "Rhenic Doubler Current" and to one side was a lever labelled "Phanoband Isolator" and some push-buttons marked "Polylateral Overload Reset" and "Primary Exchange Test." The rest, too, were very logical but equally meaningless. "Drive Pulse Synchronizer" must have some definite function because it was a large lever almost in the middle of the desk-panel and what one did with it was undoubtedly taught in the first grade of spaceman's school.
There was a large and interesting handwheel labelled "Drive Angle Trim" which Dusty gathered to be the gizmo used to equalize the drivers so the ship wouldn't yaw in flight, but he was not quite sure. There was another called the "Pre-flight Check Sequence" which probably checked the multitudinous functions of the instruments as it was turned from position to position, but what it did or what it told the pilot made no never-mind to Dusty Britton of The Space Patrol.
There was one that he recognized instantly. It said, reading from left to right "Off, Warm-up, Stand-by, Operate." It was a big four-position hand-lever and it was a good idea, excepting what did Dusty do next?
"Can Scyth help?" pleaded Dusty.
"He's out cold like a Northern Light. Lost blood and—"
"But how'm I to run this godawful thing?"